Acknowledged and almost forgotten....

I believe this was Fleetwood Mac's last outing with Peter Green. If for "Oh Well" alone you should own this album. I can't vouch for its transition from vinyl to CD, but this is the blues powerhouse that was Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green, who along with Eric Clapton, John McVie, and Mick Taylor was a John Mayall alumunus is one of the guitar greats and deserves to be ranked right along with Eric Clapton. While Green is acknowledged, he really is almost forgotten. THEN PLAY ON will give you a taste of his great talent.

HORRENDOUS SONIC DISRESPECT FOR A CLASSIC!

Yes, Warner Brothers, I mean you.



With all of the astounding advances in remastering technology, you should be ashamed to offer such a classic recording that sounds this bad. That is why I'm giving a one-star rating to a five-star album.



Imagine my dismay when I slipped this CD into my player, cued up "Oh, Well", and was greeting with the tinniest, noisiest (hiss), most distorted and worst sounding presentation of this song I've ever heard. Whatever this travesty was spawned from sounds many times removed from the original master.



Even the LP I had back in the 70's sounded better than this. And the technology certainly exists, and has existed for years, to bring this wonderful recording properly into the digital domain.



Nowhere is this more evident than listening to the single edit of "Oh Well" on the now-defunct "The Chain" box set. An A/B comparison of that remastered track shows what could be presented with proper remastering.



This is a textbook example of why consumers have complained about the CD format for so long. In this case, this is horrible neglect of a classic recording, and a pathetic corporate culture at Warner's in refusing to utilize modern technology to improve the listening experience for the consumer for over 20 years.



Whats the matter, WB, haven't enough copies of "Rumors" alone been sold to afford to properly re-master this classic? But then, that would never occur to the money-grubbing, bean-counters at the big WB, would it?



WB, where is your soul? When exactly did you lose it? Maybe that black day 20 some-odd years ago when you fired Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison and a host of talented others in the same day? Perhaps it was that day when it stopped being about the talent and became only about the money?



But then again, I am speaking to the company who has steadfastedly refused to bring its catalog into the digital age until four years ago - nearly two decades after the introduction of the CD, and then only primarily with the technical participation of Rhino Records.



Thank God for Rhino, otherwise, WB's would have never gotten off their lazy, greedy collective asses to rectify anything in the music catalog. Their attitude has obviously always been: "Hey people are going to buy this stuff anyway, so why should we spend extra dollars to make it better?".



As I said before, Warner Brothers, you should be ashamed. You dishonor the artists whose true genius cannot be fully (audibly) appreciated, and the legacy of the pioneers of your company who found and nurtured those artists, all for the sake of the allmighty buck.

This is far overrated

I know the Mac blues purists, along with the megafans who think anything FM ever hacked into a microphone is golden, will target this review as "unhelpful". However, holding the party line would be the truly unhelpful act on my part toward my fellow consumers.



I love pop...and I love blues...so I can appreciate both extremes of the Fleetwood Mac style. But this is not a 5 star blues album in the sense that it can proudly stand alongside classic blues from Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and the like. Even taken as a blues-influenced rock album, it can't hold a candle to Clapton's best efforts. This however is probably the best effort turned out by the Peter Green era Mac, containing nearly all of their best early material.



"Oh Well (Pt.1)" is a straight up classic, wisely included on "The Chain" boxset. Here you get the entire 8:56 version and you see why it wasn't a hit as is...it's simply too long. It flags after several minutes of tasteful acoustic guitar and what sounds like recorder. Masturbation ode "Rattlesnake Shake" also is a great Peter Green rocker. Green adds one more highlight with moody blues number "Before the Beginning".



Guitarist/lyricist Danny Kirwan manages to be responsible for several disc highlights ("Although the Sun is Shining" is gorgeous although lyrically slight and "Like Crying" is a nice blues) and pitfalls (the lyric for "When You Say" is abysmal,"My Dream" is a dull instrumental) at the same time.



BOTTOM LINE:

Don't expect it to supplant a giant hole in your musical education, but if all you know of Mac is the Buckingham/Nicks era, you're missing out on some good early music. This is worth having for any Mac fan and most rock appreciators will find it a worthy addition to their collections.



3 1/2 stars.